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Monday, March 7, 2011

PERSI

PERSI is another resource that I've recently discovered. No, I haven't been living in a cave ... I do know about PERSI. But only today did I take a good look at what it has to offer.

Since I'm focusing some of my research now on Chautauqua County, New York I need additional resources. Almost all of my research has previously been in Ohio, and I pretty much know what/where I can obtain the needed resources, who I can contact, etc.

When I first looked for a genealogical society for Chautauqua County I did not find an actual website for one. Today I tried again and found this website. I explored the website and decided to join. Then I thought ... what do they offer that could be online? I looked for newspapers and found that a Chautauqua newspaper from 1824-1932 is available on microfilm close to where I live. That's now on my To-Do list. I checked NewspaperArchive for what holdings they have available. Nothing found that went back to the needed time period. I had already checked GenealogyBank and nothing was found there either.

Then for some reason I thought of HeritageQuest and PERSI. Sure enough I hit the jackpot! I searched Places, entering "New York" for state, "Chautauqua" for county, left keywords blank, and selected "Biography" for record type. Thirty-two items were returned, mostly from the Chautauqua Genealogical Society's newsletter "Chautauqua Genealogist". I've filled out the order form for six items. I also was able to save a copy of what I'd selected to my computer, complete with notes.

I'm just hoping it doesn't take the 6-8 weeks that I'm told to allow for receipt of my requests!

Check out this article by Lorine McGinnis Schulze for a good explanation on how to use PERSI if you haven't already used it.

Now I need to get back to searching PERSI ...

Disclosure Statement: I have no association with NewspaperArchive. My association with GenealogyBank is only as a subscriber.